What’s your most immediate next step?

We’ve been accepted as students at The Word Language School in Chiang Rai, Thailand. The fall semester begins September 5th, 2023, and we are leaving the U.S. on August 27th to get there a week ahead of time to situate ourselves before school starts.

When will you be going back to Thailand?

Our departing flight is Sunday, August 27th 2023, at 7:30PM EST. We arrive in Chiang Mai on August 29th at 10:30AM local time (August 28th at 9:30PM EST). Chiang Mai is about a four hour drive away from Chiang Rai where we will be living, so we will then need to drive to our permanent home.

What will you be doing there?

Our year-long stay from 2018-2019 provided us with a solid foundation in the Thai language, but to be really effective in our long-term ministry we realized then that we would need a stronger grasp to have real conversations. Perhaps that seems obvious, but many missionaries in Thailand have little to no Thai language ability and so we wanted to begin our next phase with real classroom instruction to work towards language fluency.

This also allows us to get student visas which allow us to stay in-country for 6 months to a year, though we’re only committing to a single semester at this time. We will also find ourselves for the first time in Thailand without a full and exhausting schedule every day, so we plan to travel around within Thailand to visit multiple CHF Homes of Hope as well as our kids at the Village of Hope in Phusang.

We will look for a condo or house to rent on a lease with some additional bedrooms and would love to have our girls from the VOH come spend weekends or school breaks with us. That would also be a space where we could host other guests.

What about after the school semester?

We will be heading to Thailand for school with just our suitcases, leaving behind all our possessions and pets with friends. When the semester ends and we come back to the U.S., we are hoping to have raised the funds necessary to apply for and purchase 5-year Thai Elite Visas which are multi-entry tourist visas. Each visa costs about $16,000, but with them we have freedom from 90-day visa expirations which require us to leave Thailand every three months for Laos, Malaysia or Myanmar to re-apply for another visa which isn’t guaranteed to be issued. They are also multi-entry so we can leave the country as needed to travel back to the U.S. or visit other countries.

With our 5-year visas secured we would then arrange to have our possessions and pets moved with us for a long-term residency in Thailand. CHF is currently in the process of building a new Home Of Hope near Bangkok where children rescued in partnership with the Thai government will live, and we are exploring the opportunity to run that home. Our language school stay will provide us time to visit that location and be more involved in its setup.

What are your needs?

There are two broad categories of need:

• Monthly Support: As foreign missionaries we do not earn a direct salary, and our Thai visas expressly prohibit working for income while in-country. Our affiliated organizations (CPC and CHF) support us by collecting donor funds and distributing them to us on a monthly basis, but do not pay us from their operating accounts. That means 100% of our needs like rent, food, vehicle fuel, and travel costs are provided by donors like you. We cannot put money away for retirement, and have no alternate revenue streams to tap into if something unexpected were to come up. We worked hard for many years to reduce our debts to zero to make every donated dollar count. We take our financial responsibility to our supporters seriously!
  
  We have set a goal of $2,000 a month in recurring monthly support that we can live on and trust will be there during our entire time abroad. The best way to become a monthly supporter is to visit our CHF donation page which gives options for using a card or a bank account directly. CHF not only provides the secure payment portal but also access to a CRM tool that we use to track donations and donor contact information so we can be aware of who is giving, how much we’re receiving, and how to contact you with updates on how we’re doing. CHF collects 5% of our donations to provide the payment portal and CRM, which means 95% of your donations go directly to us, and we are quickly and easily able to access those funds via direct deposits to our bank account; for monthly support it is easiest and most preferred to donate to CHF.

• “Thailand Elite” Visas: Once our language school semester ends in early 2024 we will be ready to formally immigrate to Thailand on a multi-year commitment. Previously we used “Type O” visas which are meant for volunteer charity workers, which required sponsorship by CHF-Thailand and were only valid for 90 days; every three months we needed to travel outside of Thailand to a neighboring country’s Thai consulate to reapply, each time being unsure of whether we’d be approved or not. As students we will use an “ED” student visa, but only so long as we are enrolled and paying for school.
  
  For our long-term stability we intend to pursue “Thailand Elite” visas which are tourist-class, multi-entry so we can leave the country without nullifying our visas, and offered up to 20 years in duration. The 5-year visas we are seeking cost $16,000 each ($32,000 total), which is about the total cost of leaving the country every 3 months over the same five year period. Apart from monthly support, we are raising money to purchase these visas as soon as our school semester ends so that we can settle in and set up shop with peace of mind.
  
  CPC does not provide our own payment portal or other utilities and so they forward 100% of your donations to us which makes them an ideal target for large lump-sum donations. For larger non-recurring donations to help us afford our visas or other costs, donating to CPC is the most effective.

How can I support you?

In a number of ways! You can financially support us by clicking here, and you can also pray for our preparations:

• As we raise funds for our Thailand mission, our Elite Visa costs, and to support us while back home in the U.S.
• As we emotionally prepare to part with our pets one more time.
• As we continue towards gaining clarity for a longer-term ministry at the Bangkok home or elsewhere.
• As we begin to make another big move internationally and return to being students.

How do you use donated funds?

We do not earn income from a job in Thailand such as teaching, all of our income comes directly from donations. That means we rely on those funds to pay our rent, feed ourselves, put gas in our car, and make our own donations to children, volunteers and others we encounter during our ministry. As contractors for both CPC and CHF, our “business” is being full-time missionaries. Just like any other business we track expenses necessary for the mission and keep a detailed ledger for our own tax purposes but also for reporting back to CPC and CHF.

We’re committed to transparency and take the responsibility of properly handling donations seriously; when money is donated to us for a specific need or use we are always sure to honor that request and document it accordingly. For example, when we receive money to buy ice cream for the kids we take pictures of the big event and be sure to let the kids know where that treat came from.